Thinking strings… The Praying Mantis Has A Voice !!

INSIGHTS AND NOTES THROUGH THE CREATIVE “THINKING STINGS” FROM THE ERANOS LECTURE SERIES; THE CREATIVE PATTERN IN PRIMITIVE AFRICA BY LAURENS VAN DER POST

There is a part of our spirit to which this voice of Mantis, speaking from an age of stone to an age of men with hearts of stone, commands us with the authentic tone of eternal renewal..” Pg. 40

Praying Mantis Mandala for The Bushmen of the Kalahari desert and their “Thinking Strings” by Hudley

I am in the process of reflecting on the lecture, The Creative Pattern In Primitive Africa by Laurens van der Post. The lecture speaks of the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert and their ancient mythologies that happen to include Praying Mantis as their own “Spirit of Creation.”

The Bushmen worshiped the Mantis and consulted him as an oracle. Pg 21.

I include in this post, from the lecture, a poem / lament “by a father of a Bushman that lived over a hundred years ago… he was a rainmaker and a magician.” Pg. 38

People were those who
Broke for me the string
Therefore,
The place became like this to me,
On account of it,
Because the string was that which broke for me.
Therefore,
The place does not feel to me,
As the place used to feel to me,
On account of it.
For,
The place feels as if it stood open before me,
Because the string has broken for me,
Therefore,
The place does not feel pleasant to me,
On account of it.

What is interesting to me is though Laurens van der Post naturally brings and weaves the Bushmen and Wolfgang von Goethe together in comparison as to the writing of their particular styles of poetry, I take it further by placing it in the continuity of music which highlights this post in a delightful way. An essence of what this brings together and what it very well means. I came upon a connection or “thinking string’ between Wolfgang von Goethe and the German band Kraftwerk.

The “thinking strings.” This is the process of reconnecting the “thinking strings.” A continuity of thoughts, dreams, magic, “stories from the wind” and life .

Listen to the music and read the poetry. I am asking for the feelings that it generates in you. It will provoke you. My hopeful goal is to tie the “thinking strings” together again and to find what may have been lost, which is the spiritual beauty of the Bushmen. The Bushmen are the foundation of this Lecture by Laurens van der Post. Reading it has had a profound impact on my life. I also wait for the “stories of life before and beyond the moment .”

The Bushmen, Goethe, Laurens van der Post and the Praying Mantis.

The Mantis will sit in an attitude of extreme reverence and contemplation, his head turned sometimes slightly on side as if he were waiting…for the wind to come from far beyond the mountains on the other side of the desert to bring him a story of life before and beyond the moment. …~ Pg. 22.

[Lyrics are an excerpt of “The Heaven Prolog” from Faust – Wolfgang von Goethe. In this masterpiece, these lines are said by Raphael archangel]

QUOTES :

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art.

“Scientists know that electromagnetic waves carry information. Radio waves are a common example of how information is sent out via electromagnetic waves. The waves that your heart and brain generate carry information that is sent through your body and out into the space around you, just like a radio transmitter. Yet the heart’s signals have much more power.” – The HeartMath Story, as Told by Founder Doc Childre

I’ve heard it said that the soul doesn’t live inside our body but that it is more like a womb in which we are contained.

“This disco guy wanted funk in our sound with 10,000 backing vocals, the guy laughed at Tony when he tried to sing, they treated us like shit. Casey wanted to hit that engineer dick…Posh Boy told us not to play games with him, he’d play games with us. That engineer was a real dick.”

~ Steve Soto ADOLESCENTS
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In our over psychological culture, psychological testing substitutes for this seasoned eye and prevents its development. Instead of looking, we test; instead of imaginative insight, we read write-ups; instead of interviews, inventories; instead of stories, scores. Psychology assumes it can get at character by probing motivations, reaction responses, choices, and projections. It uses concepts and numbers to access the soul, rather than relying on the anomalous eye of a practiced observer.

Hillman, James. The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life (Kindle Locations 844-847). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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It is the prime task of a truly modern mind to endure both the spiritual and the practical as the framework for her life.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

~Truman Capote
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“And just as the soul that is inside your dust.”

~ Pg 8 The Divine Comedy ~ Dante
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“I always liked the intensity of the recording.”

~ Chris Bailey from the band The Saints
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“Sometimes people try and tell me what is and isn’t punk, or that GBH do or don’t fit in, but they’re generally no older than my socks, and they know about as much. I’ve lived my life doing what I want the way I want to ever since I got expelled from school. Ever since 1977….That’s punk rock”

~ Ross Lomas: From his Book City Baby.
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“As I was walking among the fires of Hell,
delighted with the enjoyments of Genius;
which to Angels look like torment and insanity.
I collected some of their Proverbs. ”

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